Buff food, potions?

[RiversideGuy]

BLM mid 40s now and am wondering what the best buff food, potions (other than the obvious HP and MP potions) I should be using. I assume there really is no equivalent to flasks in WoW (or did I miss something?).

[Velisra]

You can look at your character sheet to see what your most desired stats are for your current class, and if you hover over them it will tell you what exactly each stat does for you. After you determine which stat you might like to increase, you can look here:

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Gu..._by_Urthdigger

to find appropriate food. Yes, this guide says it's out of date, however since you're still in the ARR content (as opposed to the xpac content) you should be able to get a good idea of what to look for there.

You can also look at this site:

http://ffxivcrafting.com/food

Which is great for many other reasons as well!

ETA: Food in FF is a little funny, since it doesn't have a level requirement. Instead, you'll see a percentage number, and a maximum number. I guess you have to do a little math to figure it out. You don't want to use a food that would give you a 6% boost with a max of 22 stat points if your class only currently has 100 stat points, since you'd only actually see an increase of 6 points so the bulk of that food would be wasted--and some foods ain't cheap!!

[Urthdigger]

You can look at your character sheet to see what your most desired stats are for your current class, and if you hover over them it will tell you what exactly each stat does for you. After you determine which stat you might like to increase, you can look here:

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Gu..._by_Urthdigger

to find appropriate food. Yes, this guide says it's out of date, however since you're still in the ARR content (as opposed to the xpac content) you should be able to get a good idea of what to look for there.

!!!!! Do not use my guide yet! It currently uses a lot of 1.0 information. My life's been busy, so I put that on hold... but I think I'll take this as an impetus to get on it. I'll post here again when I've updated it.

[RiversideGuy]

You can look at your character sheet to see what your most desired stats are for your current class, and if you hover over them it will tell you what exactly each stat does for you. After you determine which stat you might like to increase, you can look here:

Said character sheet lists a LOT of different stats, but far as I can see, no pointing to that which is most important... what they are/do is really useless because I don't know what a Black Mage in FF XIV performs best with. I do know Intellect is most important, but as a primary stat, I don't see any buff food giving INT. Somehow I doubt I can translate my pretty deep understanding of what mages need in WoW... AND it's different there betwween the 3 sub specs of Mages.

[Velisra]

!!!!! Do not use my guide yet! It currently uses a lot of 1.0 information. My life's been busy, so I put that on hold... but I think I'll take this as an impetus to get on it. I'll post here again when I've updated it.

Oops, sorry! Well... it was still informative, and I'm not an "end-game raider" type person anyway. /shrug The other site I linked is regularly updated, and it also has a nice table/graph type interface to help find the perfect foods.


As to BLM stats, there's a very long and involved Black Mage thread here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...age-Calculator

which was updated in January. The spreadsheet linked seems like it may have had an update in March. There are stat weights there, as well as a stat priority that looks like:

Weapon DMG > INT > DET >= SSPD > CRIT

This is all from ARR, but considering that you're still leveling, it will probably do for now, and I'm not sure that the stat priority will have changed that much anyway. There may be other things out there that are more current, and a google search might turn those up, or perhaps someone who plays a BLM will pop in shortly to help things along.

[T2teddy]

Said character sheet lists a LOT of different stats, but far as I can see, no pointing to that which is most important... what they are/do is really useless because I don't know what a Black Mage in FF XIV performs best with. I do know Intellect is most important, but as a primary stat, I don't see any buff food giving INT. Somehow I doubt I can translate my pretty deep understanding of what mages need in WoW... AND it's different there betwween the 3 sub specs of Mages.

on the second page of the meals on the MB is where you find our foods. Go for anything to do with spellspeed/crit/accuracy. Because the darned stuff is so ridiculously overpriced these days I usually just go to Vesper Bay and hit up the mender merchant for his bubble/pearl chocolate for wuesting and save food with better stats such as pastry fish, ginger cookies and pineapple ponzecake for the dungeons

[RiversideGuy]

Ah, now we're talking... although I can guess there may be some minor dfferences in opinion as to whats best! Ah-yup, I'd guess leveling and end game/raiding are different beasts, I tell ya, my few years of WoW experience really pays off in many ways (crit is massive for Fire Mages, they got rid of the equivalent of accuracy [Hit]).

Got a great overpriced story for ya... there was a time I needed an orange or some innocuous item... and one had to find it and buy it first. Hit the MB and saw many stacks of 99, for ~20k Gil. There was ONE posted for 2 pieces, but the guy wanted 22k for the set of 2. Even though I really have no idea of the value of things... this seemed way beyond the pale... like those <expletive deleted> sellers were trying to rerally take advanatge of new players big time (not unlike uber's "surge pricing"). Did some research, walked around the marketing alley and found it for 5 gil from a merchant.

[RiversideGuy]

The being said, I wanted to check out buying some head piece... I HATED the looks of the one that I had to wear. So I ended up with a good looking head piece AND a shield (both BIG upgrades to what I had) AND it cost a total of about 4k gil... seemed pretty reasonabe to me. The IRONY is that today I did Dzemael Darkhold... and the exact same head piece dropped!

[T2teddy]

Once you hit 50, do not buy any more gear. Its all provided by the main story quests, starting with ilvl70 for the first set and ending with 110 items and weapons in the Dreams of Ice patch quests. All this is blue quality and used to fall as drops in Coils of Bahamut and the first two Crystal Tower raids. Hard mode dungeons drop green gear 90-100 also.

Oh and once you get into HW content quests, THEY give you ilvl115-150 stuff all HHQ grade. So save your money

[RiversideGuy]

Got it T2! Indeed even leveling from 1 to 50 on the MSQs does seem to provide enough gear (well, shields drop extremely rarely, don't think I've seen one drop since I was around 20). The 2 purchases came about because I was looking to see if I could get something close to the same specs that LOOKED better than what I had and I discovered the 2 items that were much better than what I had equipped.